Lecturing on Rizal

Next week, I shall be in Germany to deliver two lectures on Jose Rizal.

I was invited by Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main, also known as Frankfurt University, to give a lecture on June 21. I was invited by Universität Passau to present a paper during a symposium on Rizal on June 30.

To prepare for the talks, I searched the Web for information about the two universities. I learned three things relevant to the Philippines today, since the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) is doing a typology of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). One of the types being discussed is the “research university.”

Here is Frankfurt University’s description of itself:

“Frankfurt University is one of the leading research universities in Germany. Around 2,500 professors and academic staff carry out research in 16 departments. The university is at the forefront of research in areas such as law and finance, life sciences (especially membrane proteomics, RNA-ligands interaction, biomolecular nuclear magnetic resonance), drug research, cognitive neuroscience, heavy ions physics and interdisciplinary research on Africa. Research in the humanities at Frankfurt University ranked second in a survey of all German universities carried out by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation). Research activities in the areas of finance, money and law will be brought together in the House of Finance, which will be established in the coming years.”

Here is Passau University’s description, roughly translated from the German:

“Research projects are carried out not only in the departments. Larger research projects, for example, are conducted by several departments — often of different subjects — together with institutes and centers; these projects may either be specialized or interdisciplinary. These research projects ensure that science is translated into practice. In particular, these projects include active knowledge and technology transfer to the regional economy.”

What did I learn from these two descriptions?

First, to be called a research university, an HEI must be “at the forefront of research.” This rules out projects such as applied research, state of the art research, secondary research, and things of that sort. Unfortunately, much of what we call research in HEIs are really glorified dissertations, spent mainly in applying established international theories to local phenomena.

Rarely do we find dissertations (yes, there are some) that propose a new way of looking at a field (what some call “model building”). The silly (to me) condition that a dissertation should have a “conceptual framework” immediately rules out creative thinking, because the framework is expected to precede the research rather than be the result of it.

Second, to be truly productive of new knowledge, large research projects must be interdisciplinary. The late Brother Andrew Gonzalez FSC, who was very much ahead of his time, proposed the abolition of academic departments a couple of decades ago, to be replaced by issue-based research institutes, but nobody really understood what he was trying to do.

We only have to look at the reading lists of courses in various fields today, and we will realize that scholars in many fields are reading the same books. According to the ISI Web of Science, for example, Michel Foucault is the most cited scholar in learned journals in the humanities, be they on literature, psychology, political science, philosophy, art, theology, history, or whatever.

Third, a research university cannot avoid being compared to other universities. Ranking universities is part and parcel of being in the academic world. Frankfurt prides itself on being ranked second among Germany’s universities. Our own HEIs are very defensive about the way we always rank low compared to our Asian neighbors, not to mention world-ranked universities (we say, we did not participate, we did not cooperate, we do not really care about what others think, and other lame excuses like that).

Instead, we should be working to be on top of the heap, at least among Asians. When the University of the Philippines was the best university in our region (sometime when I was a kid), we were very proud of it. Now, we pretend that we do not care about rankings. The situation is pretty much the same as government. When SWS or Pulse Asia says that the government is doing well, the Palace proclaims it to the high heavens. When the surveys say that the government is not doing well, the Palace says there is something wrong with the survey methodologies. We cannot have it both ways.

By the way, I relearned the little German that I studied as an undergraduate student at UP Diliman. At that time, I thought that my being required to take up six units of German was an imposition devoutly to be unwished. Now, I realize the wisdom of having been taught a language that I can speak, albeit ungrammatically, when I am in Germany.

I still know enough German to say the most important words in any language - “thank you.” Therefore, I say, “Danke schon” to the Philippine Consulate General in Frankfurt (which is hosting me), particularly then Consul General and now Ambassador Maria Cleofe R. Natividad, to the universities of Frankfurt and Passau, to the German embassy in Manila (that waived my visa fee), and to De La Salle University (that is paying for my airfare) for yet another opportunity to tell the world about my hero Jose Rizal.